Re: [PROPOSAL] New Virtual Packages and way to handle Classpath

[Jan Schulz <jasc.usenet@gmx.de>]

Hallo Per,

* Per Bothner wrote:
>What you presumably mean is "when I install a JVM that claims to
>be compatible with a certain JDK version, then all programs which
>require a JVM compatible with that JDK version will work."  This
>is still tautological and I'm not sure it's very useful.  If a

compatible wrt API: API-1.4 and so on.

>program requires JDK 1.x, then it requires JDK 1.x.  More likely,
>it requires certain *features* of JDK 1.x, but it doesn't
>require complete 100% compatibility with JDK 1.x.

Yes.

>What happens is that someone will decide "for program P we will
>make use of features from JDK 1.x but we will not require JDK 1.y."
>That doesn't tell you very much about whether it will run some
>alternative JVM.  If the latter claims to support all JDK 1.x
>features, then it will *probably* run, but you still have to test it.

So what do you suggests as a alternative?
Stay with the 
for i in $LIST_OF_ALL_KNOWN_JAVA_WHICH_WILL_WORK ; do
...
done
and having a Depends like this:
jsdk1.3 | jsdk1.4 |jsdk1.4-bd | j2sdk1.4-sun | kaffe (>..)|...
(sun, bd and ibm should be from mpkg-j2sdk) Just imagine
additional 1.5, 1.6 and so on...

This is the situation I try to solve with this Proposal. 

Jan
-- 
Jan Schulz                     jasc@gmx.net
     "Wer nicht fragt, bleibt dumm."